Mr. Speaker, it is good to be here to speak about such an important issue and about our demand to allow the Liberals to have a carbon tax election.
Why are we asking for this? It is because 70% of Canadians, 70% of the premiers, are now saying that they oppose the Liberal-NDP carbon tax because of the impact it is having on their everyday lives.
I find it interesting, throughout the speeches today, that my Liberal and NDP colleagues keep professing that this is not impacting the cost of living and that this has nothing to do with affordability. That is simply not true.
We have the facts from the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The Parliamentary Budget Officer testified at committee, and he said, “once you factor in the rebate and also the economic impacts...the majority of households will see a negative impact as a result of the carbon tax.”
Canadians are waking up to this every single day. Certainly my constituents in Foothills are, who are paying $2,900 a year in the carbon tax. The Liberals say that they are so much better off. They are getting about $1,800 of their own money back, leaving them a thousand dollars worse off.
I do not understand why the Liberals and the NDP are fighting so hard to say that this is not impacting the cost of living. They should be celebrating this every single day when they hear about Canadians struggling to feed themselves, heat their homes, pay their mortgages or pay their interest rates. This is exactly what they want from the carbon tax. They want the carbon tax to be so expensive that it forces Canadians to change their behaviour, regardless of the fact that in my riding of 33,000 square kilometres, we do not have public transit. It does not exist. There are many parts of this country where we do not have alternatives. That is what makes this so frustrating and why Canadians have just had enough of the Liberal-NDP carbon tax coalition.
They also talk about how they have won elections while campaigning on the carbon tax. They misled Canadians in those elections. They said they would never increase the carbon tax higher than $50 a tonne. On April 1, it goes up 23% to $80 a tonne, on its way to $170 a tonne by 2030. The promise to Canadians from the Liberal-NDP carbon tax coalition was that the carbon tax would never go over $50 a tonne. It is amazing how the song changes when we are not in an election year.
That is why we are saying that, if they are so confident that Canadians support their 23% increase in the carbon tax, then go to an election and let Canadians decide. However, I am doubtful that they will vote to make that happen today because they know that 70% of Canadians oppose the carbon tax, right across this country.
The other part that they do not mention is that the GST is charged on top of the carbon tax. We also now have the numbers from the Parliamentary Budget Officer for just how punitive that GST is and what Canadians are paying. Last year, Canadians paid $486 million in GST just on the carbon tax. Next year, when they increase the carbon tax by 23%, that number will be a billion dollars.
Cumulatively, since the Liberals brought in their carbon tax, Canadians have paid $6 billion in GST just on the carbon tax. Not only is the carbon tax not reducing emissions and is clearly a tax grab, but the GST is just the whipped cream on top of their tax ice cream cone. It is unbelievable, the amount that Canadians are being punished through the carbon tax, a tax on a tax.
Thankfully, again, Conservatives have a private member's bill to remove the GST from the carbon tax, and I certainly encourage my colleagues from across the floor to support that.
The carbon tax also has an incredibly devastating impact on Canadian farmers, which certainly leads to higher prices for Canadians on the grocery store shelves. I know my colleagues have mentioned that today. Common sense says this: If we increase taxes on the farmer who grows the food, the trucker who transports the food, the manufacturer who processes the food and the retailer who sells the food, do we know who will feel it at the end of that supply chain? It's the consumer who buys the food.
That is why food inflation stays well above the Canadian inflation index. Farmers are paying the carbon tax over and over again, when they buy fertilizer and fuel, when they plant their seeds, when they move their products to market and when they are hauling cattle or grain. Every single time, they are paying the carbon tax.
The Agriculture Carbon Alliance did a survey of 50 farms earlier this month. That survey of 50 farms showed that those farms across Canada were paying more than $320,000 in carbon taxes in one month. That is just 50 farms. We have close to 200,000 farms in Canada. If a small percentage is already paying more than $320,000 a month, and if we extrapolate that over every farm in Canada, members can understand why farmers are so frustrated with the Liberal-NDP carbon tax coalition and the punishment it is laying on them again on April 1, increasing the carbon tax by another 23%.
I have to ask, why? We put forward Bill C-234, which would give an exemption of the carbon tax on natural gas and propane for farmers to heat and cool their barns, to dry their grain and to power greenhouses, which grow fresh produce for Canadians across this country.
However, the Liberals have been playing games with that bill, trying to kill that bill in the Senate and, again, here in the House of Commons. We know that legislation would save farmers close to $1 billion a year, making them more economically viable and making food production more affordable for farmers, and certainly for Canadian consumers at the grocery stores.
However, the Liberals do not want to support legislation that supports Canadian farmers. Their answer, all the time, is that farmers are very supportive of the carbon tax. That is what the agriculture minister says every time I ask him a question on this issue. I have spoken to farmers right across this country, and I have not spoken to a single farmer, not one, who has said that we should keep the carbon tax in place and that they are very supportive of the carbon tax.
Farmers do not support the carbon tax, and it is not only due to the punishing higher input costs they have to pay but because it is making them look like laggards. In fact, Canadian farmers set the gold standard in sustainability and stewardship.
A recent report from the Global Institute for Food Security showed that on a ton of canola grown in Saskatchewan, the carbon footprint is 67% lower than anywhere else in the world. A trainload of Canadian wheat could travel around the world three and a half times before it has the same carbon footprint as wheat grown in Europe. These are incredible achievements.
Farmers should be lauded for those accomplishments, not punished with higher carbon taxes, but that is exactly what the Liberal-NDP carbon tax coalition is doing. How did farmers do this? It was not done through punitive regulation and carbon taxes; it was done through embracing new innovation and new technology, something they do every single day.
There are consequences to these carbon taxes. Canadians feel it every single day. I want to talk about some specifics. Collwest grain farm in Collingwood, Ontario, paid $36,000 in carbon taxes in one month. Quattro Farms in Bow Island, Alberta, paid $93,000 in carbon taxes in 2023. The Kielstra farm in my riding of Foothills paid $180,000 in carbon taxes last year to heat and cool their barns for their chickens, which is an animal health issue. A farm in the riding of Simcoe—Grey paid $25,000 in carbon taxes in the month of November alone.
This leads to higher food costs, and we are seeing two million Canadians go to food banks every single month. Those are unprecedented numbers. The Liberals say it has no impact on food costs. The Food Professor, the expert on food pricing in Canada, Dr. Sylvain Charlebois at Dalhousie University, said that inflationary pressures and uncompetitive policies, like the carbon tax, on growing, processing and transporting food will increase the costs of wholesale food by 34%. That is the impact that these policies are having on farmers, on truckers and on Canadian consumers who are just trying to feed their families.
This is unsustainable for Canadian consumers. This is unsustainable for Canadian farmers. My challenge to the Liberal-NDP carbon tax coalition, if they are so proud of this carbon tax and if they think Canadians will support this 23% increase on April 1, is for them to put their money where their mouths are and to call a carbon tax election, and let Canadians decide for themselves.
